For those lucky enough to have snagged a coveted seat to the Midland Theatre’s sold out Stage Door Series show with Sam Mooney back in October, you’ll fondly recall Sam’s honesty, wit, and charm shared over the course of the evening. I first crossed paths with Sam at a SoFar Sounds show in Louisville, where he held a quiet room rapt with a voice built for intimate spaces. His songs have a way of drawing you in; not with volume, but with honesty. If you’re new to Sam’s music, think soulful piano lines, fluid acoustic guitar, thoughtful storytelling, and heartfelt melodies. I had the opportunity to chat with him about his start as a musician, what he hopes listeners will take away from his music, his songwriting process, pre-show rituals, and some tips for budding creators.

Midwest Riff Review: Sam, thanks for taking the time to speak with me during what I’m sure is a busy time of the year for you. I wanted to start out our conversation by asking you to share with folks a little bit about yourself.

Sam Mooney: Yeah, absolutely. I grew up in a little town called Brookhaven, MS about 90-minutes north of New Orleans which was a great place to grow up. It was a really supportive place to be as a young artist kicking off my career. Even though it was a small town there were a lot of people who cared about the arts scene. I’m one of seven kids and on the younger end of that group.

On his start with playing and recording music

I started playing piano first and then a few years after that songwriting, but what really sent my love for music into overdrive was discovering Soul music in all its forms. For me it was Ray Charles who was the first artist I ever really did a deep dive on. I fell in love with his catalog and the feel of that music; his voice, and the way he used piano so beautifully. That led me down the road to all of these other artists integral to my journey, you know, Stevie Wonder, Marvin Gay, and Bill Withers who are not only really great songwriters but make some of the best music imaginable. I also have Pop roots. I’m a big John Mayer guy and so my goal in songwriting has been to take those old school influences but translate them in a way I want to. The final breakthrough for me was singing. I was really shy to sing but I didn’t want to write the songs and not deliver them. At sixteen I finally had a breakthrough from the stage fright. After that, I started gigging up all over town, doing open mics, talent competitions, and whatever I could find to get on the stage really.

On going to college and prioritizing music

By the time I went to college, I had already put out an EP that had done well and started playing around the region. I went to Ole Miss in Oxford, Mississippi, and I had a great experience in school, but for better or worse I always saw myself as a musician first and a student second you know. I was like, I’m a full-time musician and school’s this thing I have to do by day. So I’d get out of class on Friday afternoon and take off for Memphis or Birmingham or whatever town I could go to play whatever gig. And, so I have to say by the time school was over, the the ball was rolling pretty well. I was starting to get some cool opening slots on big shows and the songs were starting to find more and more of an audience online to the point where I could go full time with music.

On life as a musician

Yeah well I’m in Nashville married to a fellow musician, and we’ve put out a record together on a separate project (Highland Rim), and I mean music’s the biggest part of my work life, you know. I do a variety of things really. I get hired a lot to play keys on other people’s albums or live shows so I do a ton of gigs that aren’t, you know, Sam Mooney shows but also private events, corporate things. Most musicians gig significantly more than their tour dates would show, and I’m no exception. But my favorite thing in the world, is exactly what I got to do at the Midland Theater, which is playing my music to an audience that really appreciates it and is there to listen. It’s a challenge to do what we do as creatives. It has its own hard days and heartaches, but for as long as I’ve been doing it I have never dreaded Mondays. I’m not someone who lives for the weekend and work is this thing I have to get done. I find a lot of joy and purpose in my work and there’s always going to be those random difficult times with it, but holistically it’s something I love to do. I have never lost my gratitude for how cool it is and I always find a way to get a lot of energy out of it.

On musical style

If I could condense it down to a few words, I think I would say soulful pop or maybe acoustic soul. It would be some combination of that or soulful singer-songwriter. I’m not a musician who thinks that pop is a dirty word or something to shy away from, so there’s something poppy about how I write that I actually really like. It’s pivoted from record to record. I put an album out in 2019 called Time Bomb that was by far the popiest thing I’d done in terms of just how it was produced. They were very much overwhelmingly soulful songs, but it just had that poppy polish about it with even some R&B elements. The record that I’m making right now is a lot more real instruments and organic production, tracking everything live. It’s still very soulful, but maybe more on the jazzy side of soul or acoustic side of soul. So each record drifts.

Then of course, and this is a separate thing, but the Highland Rim project I do with my wife has a soulfullness in some of the songs, but is more singer-songwriter acoustic with elements of country. So, it drifts around from record to record, but I think the thing I always come back to is those soul-based genres which I would define as jazz blues, gospel, R&B and and the like. I always find my way back to playing a lot of 7th chords (chuckling).

On the Highland Rim project with wife Polly

Polly and I met met through music back in 2019. The whole project (Highland Rim) really came about very organically because music was a big part of what brought us together initially. Once we started going out we would have little moments where she’d bring me up for a song at her show, and I’d come up and play piano while she sang, or I’d bring her up for a song. Then over time, we just started getting a lot of requests to perform together, so there was kind of this organic way it happened. Also traveling together and making music together is one of our favorite things, so it was kind of like, why not? So we decided to go that route for the last couple years and it was our biggest project focus. We went all over the country doing that and had a blast and we made a record that we really like. That project leans a little more into the acoustic side of what we do and is really lyric driven singer-songwriter kind of stuff. We’re super proud of it. The full record came out at the end of last year.

On his songwriting process

It depends on the song. I think the best days of songwriting is when they all come at once, you know, in this lightning strike kind of way. That doesn’t happen often. Songwriting is a funny mix of discipline and also just luck. It’s a funny science because I’ve written songs I was very proud of where it was this really regimented process of, “I have an idea and I’m going to work on it more from 2 to 330 on Thursday.” But I’ve also had times where I was doing my vocal warm-ups and I hit a chord while I was messing around and it was like, oh, that’s something. And then I drop everything I’m doing for 2 hours and start writing right then. So there’s this funny convergence of things that ideally happen all at once; something musically or melodically intriguing that happens and then you’re inspired to write something lyrically. And then the 3rd component that has to happen. As I get older and my life becomes more layered and busy, if I know I’ve got something (a song idea), I’ll clear the calendar if I can for the next couple hours and knock it out because I know that that spark won’t always be there.

On vulnerability in songwriting

It’s funny. A lot of the songs I was most anxious to release in my career because they felt really vulnerable have done the best. We often think that vulnerability or real deep honesty is not going to be palatable to the masses. But I think people are actually really hungry for art that’s honest, and all of my art has been honest, with the exception of a couple songs where I’m creating stories or running with certain ideas. But I’ve always written from the heart, and I think there’s something about growing up and getting older where there is less to prove to the world and you actually share yourself as you truly are.

On pre-show rituals

It depends on how much time I have and some of it depends a little bit on solo show or band show. If it’s a band show, there’s always like a little huddle before we go on, you know, 5 minutes before. We do a group break with something funny, some inside joke from the day and talk through the set list really quickly. When it’s solo it’s a few different things. I would say I either eat dinner or a snack of some kind, you know, ideally like an hour or so before to get loose. I do my vocal warmups to kind of ground myself and I’ll give myself a little pep talk. Not so much, “you’re gonna crush it” or relating to how I’m gonna do, but more about how I’m gonna try to be present and just enjoy the opportunity and have fun with it. One thing I like to do as much as I can, I have a very romantic relationship with the world and travel, so before the show I love to take a little walk around the neighborhood just to get a sense of what the place is like. You know, what’s the energy of the town that night? Is it a really chill Tuesday or is it a hopping Saturday night with everybody out? I like to see what I can gather from that which might inform any last minute set list choices. I usually have an idea of what I’m going to play, you know, before the day of the show, particularly if it’s a band show, because we have to rehearse a lot of times. But if it’s solo, the only person that has to know it is me and I wrote the songs so it’s easier.

On which of his songs might someone who has never heard his music understand who he is as a person

I would say 2 things jump to mind. It’s gonna sound like I’m just plugging the new single, but “Go Easy” feels a lot like me on a lot of levels. There’s a joy to it, but also a melancholy that feels like me. There’s humor, but it’s also serious in a way. It has a funny kind of sweet and sourness to it that feels a lot like me in certain ways. Particularly at least in my internal world, but and then on top of that it’s just a nice mix of fun and jazzy catchy. The other one I would say is the title track of my record Time Bomb. Probably the one I’m most proud of in terms of just its musicality. I really love the way the song is composed and it’s just a summation of a lot of things I love. And then one more I’ll say is, I know you asked for two, but there’s a song called “Always Be Around” from this last project that’s a really sweet song about unconditional love. That one is very near and dear to my heart so if I could give people 3 those would be it.

On advice to creatives hoping to break into the mainstream

I really think young artists need to hear this. Never let the response to a song affect your belief in how good it is. I have been doing this long enough to know that there is no correlation between how good the song is and how well it will do. In fact, for me personally, I have a handful of songs that I was like, “oh, that one sounds kind of cool throw it on the EP.” And it did really well. I also have a handful where I thought, “this is my finest work, and it’s gonna set the world on fire,” and they maybe did just okay. I once heard somebody say, “your song is as good as it was the day you were most excited about it.” Nothing magically happens to your recording once it’s on Spotify that changed it and made it not good if you loved it before.

Point B, after you’ve gotten comfortable with that first part is to give those songs a lot of opportunities to be heard, don’t give up on them. By doing that, it may eventually find its audience. You know, I have a song, my most streamed song called “Find My Way,” and it had a solid release but had not done a ton from a streaming perspective in its whole 1st year. I just really believed that “it’s not that this song isn’t good, it’s just that people haven’t heard it, it’s not in people’s ears.” A song can’t go crazy if people aren’t hearing it, and so I just really persisted in promoting it, and then, over a year after it was leased it finally started gaining a lot of traction.

And then the other one I would say is just some classic advice, but one mentor told it to me, and I tell it to everybody else, that success is usually the result of sustained focus over a long period of time. There’s a saying that people overestimate what they can do in a year and underestimate what they can do in 5 or something like that. And I think as creatives, it’s in our nature to be a little bit excitable and we want to chase the fresh new idea and the sparks of inspiration as they come up. And you gotta do that to some extent, but, if you are hoping to turn your creativity into business, and you’re making that choice to integrate business and art, there’s a switch that you have to be able to flip. To say, “okay, I might be past the initial window of inspiration around this idea, but if I’m going to make it work from a business perspective, I have to see it through.” To have that consistency. I think that if you have the hopes to monetize your creativity, there are those times where you have to say, “all right, I’m gonna buckle down, and I’m gonna worry less about trying to have a great next 3 months, and more about a great next 3 years.”

Talking with Sam feels a lot like listening to one of his songs, honest, unhurried, and rooted. From the small-town Mississippi kid shyly stepping onto a stage for the first time to the soulful songwriter refining his voice in Nashville, his journey has been less about chasing moments and more about honoring the long arc of the work. Whether he’s crafting vulnerable lyrics with a wink, trading harmonies with Polly, or walking a neighborhood before a show to catch its rhythm, Sam approaches music with the same quiet persistence that has carried him this far. And as he readies a new collection of songs with equal parts joy, melancholy, and a kind of lived-in soul, it’s clear he isn’t just making music. He’s building a life in it.

You can follow Sam on all the usual Social Media spots including Instagram, Facebook, Tik Tok, and YouTube.

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